How to engineer a Brickyard winner

Assistant tech director of the 1992 Indy 500 winning Galmer, chief engineer for Panther during its IRL title years and Dan Wheldon's engineer at Ganassi, Andy Brown shares his set-up secrets

My notes go back to 1992 when, as a naive ex-Formula 1 engineer, I saw four, apparently geometrically identical, left-hand turns and thought, 'How hard can it be?' I soon realised that turning left at over 220mph with very little downforce isn't easy. And those four corners, they're all different.

The problem with Turn 1 is psychological. As drivers hurtle down the straight, the grandstands seem to encroach upon the track. This makes them turn in too soon; they apex early and then have too much turning left to do on the exit, resulting in excessive understeer, scrubbing off speed or even running out of road.